


What the hammer, what the chain

by whetherwoman



Category: Society of Gentlemen - K. J. Charles
Genre: Aftercare, Consent Play, M/M, Safeword Use, Spanking, canon-typical dubious consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:41:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21828379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetherwoman/pseuds/whetherwoman
Summary: Silas and Dom spend a lazy Saturday reading and fucking. Mostly fucking.Title from William Blake because of course it is.Mind the tags.
Relationships: Dominic Frey/Silas Mason
Comments: 24
Kudos: 121
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	What the hammer, what the chain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [somnolentblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/somnolentblue/gifts).



Silas looks down. Dom is naked and kneeling at his feet, his dark head bowed. Silas grins wolfishly—he's going to make Dom look at him, later. He’s going to make the his Tory look him in the eye and beg for it, say out loud what he wants and what Silas is going to give him. He’s going to make Dominic say how much he loves it. But not now. He'll let Dom think he's getting away with it, for now. 

He walks around Dom slowly, taking his time, jostling him with one knee enough to almost tip him over, nudging a bare toe into the arch of his back to make him straighten. Silas can see Dom start to harden without a touch to his stand, his hands gripping his own thighs until the skin pales around his fingertips.

Silas's feet are bare because it's Saturday, and he's been in Dom's rooms for hours. They've been able to take advantage more and more often, lately, as Silas's revolutionary past and the Ricardians' scandals recede further behind them. Dom's servants certainly don't complain about their extra weekly half-day. Standing orders are for them to leave a cold dinner and not to be seen until the next morning, and if a respectable bookman lets himself in the trade door closer to once a week than once a month, well, who's to tell?

The increased frequency has settled the desperation that used to permeate their assignations, and when Dom had greeted him with ink-stained hands, a kiss, and, "I must finish this policy draft, do you mind terribly?" Silas had been content enough. Well, after one more kiss. Two. And a bite to Dom's lower lip, just enough to speed up his breathing and leave him looking a little dazed. Just enough to give Dom a taste of what waited for him. Silas had a book in his pocket, as always, and was satisfied to toe off his boots, sit in Dom's comfortable chair in front of his warm fire, and read to the sound of Dom's scratching pen.

For a while, away. Eventually the glint of silver in Dom's hair, reflecting the firelight as he bent over his desk, pulled Silas's attention away from his book one too many times. Eventually Silas found his eyes catching on Dom's long fingers curved around his pen. Eventually, Silas didn't want to wait any longer.

And why should he? Silas had no need to wait on another man's pleasure. He set his book aside, opened the front of his trousers, and took his lengthening prick in hand. Dom didn't notice, but Silas had no intention of being noticed. His Tory could sit and scribble his tax policies as long as he pleased—Silas knew those hands would be bent to his will soon enough. Thoughts of what he could make Dominic do flooded his mind, a parade of obscene images making his hand clench on his cock. Dominic’s hands on Silas’s prick—those lips wrapped around it—Dom’s eyes closing in pleasure, then snapping open with fear and pain. Dominic’s pretty eyes, fixed on Silas as if nothing else in the world existed. The thought made his breath catch, and that's what made Dom look up.

His reaction was everything Silas could have wanted. He sucked in an audible breath, and his eyes dropped to Silas's prick immediately.  
Silas slouched a little more in his chair, angled his cock more directly at Dominic. "That's right, Tory," he said, and grinned fiercely as Dom's cheeks flushed. "Take a look at what you're getting.”

Dom swallowed visibly. He glanced down at his papers, set his pen down carefully by the inkwell, and pushed his chair back.

Not five minutes later and here they are. Dominic's naked, his knees red where they rest on the hard wooden floor, and Silas is still mostly dressed, circling him. Dominic's eyes flicker to his, then dart away, full of shame and fear and hot desire, like nothing else Silas has ever seen. Silas stops just behind Dom and reaches out, quick as a flash, to pull his head back by his curls. The high-pitched breath that leaves Dominic's throat, barely vocalized, shoots desire down Silas's spine.

Dom's eyes meet his, and Silas can't help the way his lips twitch up as he sees the sparkle in his Tory's eyes. The moment draws out, conspiratorial and glad, the way it is so often between them these days. They've come along way from the two men who met in Millay's impersonal rooms, both hurting, guarded, alone. A year of Wednesdays behind them and another of Saturdays, and Silas knows he's gone soft because he can't imagine how he lived through the days before that. He'd had comrades in the streets and the occasional friendly tumble in the sheets, but no Dominic on his knees, smiling up at him, well known and well loved. 

Silas may have fallen in love with words long before he fell in love with a man, but the words hanging unsaid in the air between them are truer and more read than any he's read, no matter that they'll never be printed in any book or pamphlet.

He yanks Dom's curls harder, watches tears gather at the corner of Dom's eyes, sees the way his throat works against the angle to swallow. "Do your tax work well this evening, then?" he says conversationally.

"Of course," Dom says. His voice is rasping, choked by the angle Silas is holding his head at.

"Come up with some new ways to tax the poor and let the rich get richer," Silas says. It's not a question. Dom makes a sharp movement as if to object, and Silas yanks his head back harder until the only thing that can come out of Dom's throat is a pained whine. "Don't bother, Tory, I know what you're like."

"Please don't," Dom whispers. "It hurts, Silas."

Hearing his name sends a thrill through Silas, as always. There's always a part of him that's on edge when he does this to Dom, and he breathes a little easier at the reminder of what his name means between them, like this.

"I'll bet it does," he says, and tightens his hand until Dom is whimpering, arching up into Silas's hold. Then Silas lets go. Dom almost falls backwards but manages to wrench himself upright. He's panting, his stand flushed and twitching. Silas's mouth waters—he doesn't take that part, not often, but maybe tonight. 

Later, though. He has something else planned first.

"Got you a present," he says, his voice rough. He moves around so he can see Dom's face. Dom looks a little hazy, the way he gets sometimes when they're like this, like he can't keep two thoughts together. It's a rush, taming that brilliant mind, making it rest at his command. But he wants Dominic's full attention now. He nudges his toe against Dominic's balls, not hard, but enough to shock a gasp out of Dom, make him flinch away. "I said, got you a present. Gentleman like you, you're supposed to have manners. What do you say?"

"I—thank you," Dom says. His voice is shaking. He's no fool—he knows a present from Silas, when they're together like this, is not likely to be anything he enjoys.

Silas grins down at him, as viciously as he can. "Had it made special," he explains, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a tangle of soft black straps. He shakes it out, holding it by one side, until the shape of it becomes clear. "That's fine leather, it is. You're not going to see through that when I put it over your eyes. Not going to see anything I might choose to do to you."

"Please," Dom whispers, his eyes not leaving the blindfold. He's trembling a little already.

"Please what?" Silas says, and pushes his toes against Dom's sack again, harder than before. 

Dom lets out a pained gasp, but doesn't flinch this time. "Please, don't," he says, and his eyes rise to meet Silas's. "I don't want it. Please, Silas."

"And since when," Silas says, letting his voice drop into a low growl, "have I given a rat's ass about what you want?" He drops to his knees in front of Dom, tilts his head up with one thick, deceptively gentle finger under his chin. "Going to stop me?"

They're frozen like that in a long moment. Silas can almost see Dominic fighting with himself, wrestling against what he craves most desperately. 

"No," Dom whispers finally, and Silas takes his jaw in one hand and rewards him with a brutal kiss. Dom opens under him so sweetly, taking Silas's tongue and lips and teeth until Silas has to pull back for air.

"Right," he says, and slips the leather over Dom's eyes, ties the straps snugly in the back.

Then he sits back on his heels, and looks.

Dom's breath is fast but steady, and his fingers are rubbing against his thighs unconsciously. He hates this, Silas knows he does, hates it and needs it and wishes he didn't, and he's taking it anyway, just because Silas wished him to. A lock of his hair falls over the blindfold, and Silas's hand is halfway to pushing it back before he snatches his hand away.

"That's right," he says, and his voice is steady. "See anything?"

"No," Dom whispers, his voice thready with fear and desire.

"I could do anything," Silas growls. He reaches out and flicks a finger over Dom's nipple, barely a touch, but Dom flinches and gasps as if Silas had struck him. "Anything I want. I could have you on your back in a second. Get my prick in your tight arse before you knew what you were about. Is that what you want?"

"No," Dom says. He looks hard enough to pound nails. "No, Silas, I don't want—"

"You do," Silas says, and wraps his hand around Dom's prick. Dom yells, loud enough that Silas is grateful there's no one but them in Dom's apartments tonight. Silas runs his palm across the tip, smears the moisture there down the shaft, giving himself barely enough slick to set a harsh rhythm up and down Dom's length. "That's all you want. A good hard prick in you. It's all you're good for, pretty arse like yours. Say it, Tory."

Dom's mouth opens but nothing comes out.

Silas squeezes him, punishingly hard. "Say it, say you want it, say you need it—"

"I want—" Dom gasps. "I want it—Silas—I need it, fuck me, please fuck me, I need it, oh god—"

Silas takes his hand away and Dom sways, a disappointed moan escaping his lips. Silas frowns at him, considering. Dom broke quickly, much more quickly than Silas had expected. Even now, even though their lazy Saturdays are more a habit than a novelty, Dom has to be pushed, and hard, before he'll ask for it. And his hands are clenched until the knuckles are white against his thighs, the muscles in his shoulders and neck twitching with tension. Silas thinks about the way Dom looks when he's taking it, when he's accepted what Silas is giving him and his own need for it, the way his shoulders loosen and his eyes go half-lidded and his lips go soft. No, this isn't Dom giving in to anything.

"Maybe I won't," Silas says slowly, trusting his instinct. "If you want to be fucked, that's what I won't give you."

"But—"

"Did I ask your opinion?" Silas says sharply, and Dom shakes his head jerkily. His hands are clenched into fists now, trying so hard to hold on to his control. Silas needs to push him now. "Might go out for a drink, in fact. Leave you here, naked and begging for it. Leave you where anyone could walk in and see you like this." 

Dom makes a noise at that, and Silas feels satisfaction pool in his belly, wild and sweet. 

"Yeah, think I will do that," he says, reckless. He's going with his gut, like he's always done with Dom. "You just stay there." 

He walks to the door, opens it, reveling in Dom's hoarse, "No—please—" and then, without stepping through, closes it. He turns silently, drawing on every trick he's learned in his many years of hiding things to keep his feet from making noise on the floor.

Dom's back is to him, but he's never seen a back so expressive. 

"Silas?" Dom says, and Silas barely manages to keep from making a noise. 

"Oh God," Dom says, when it's clear no response is forthcoming. His breath is coming faster, his shoulders sheened with sweat. 

Silas controls his own breathing, opens his mouth so no tell-tale hiss reaches Dom's ears. Dom is rubbing his thighs, his fingers pressing deep enough to leave his skin bloodless. Silas waits to see if Dom will take off the blindfold, stand up, but he stays stock still, his fingers and fast, rasping breaths the only sign of his fear. He's not even tied up, Silas thinks wildly, he could stop this any time, he could—

"Mason," Dom says, and Silas doesn't remember stepping forward but he's at Dom's side, his hands on Dom, on his shoulders, his head.

"I'm here," Silas says, and Dom lets out a breath that's almost a sob. "I'm here, I'm right here, do you want this off?"

"Yes—Silas—" Dom says, and his breath is still too fast, his hands still clawing at his legs.

His hands, Silas thinks, even as he slips the blindfold off, runs his hands through Dom's hair, pulls Dom onto the bed to run soothing hands up and down his arms and back. _Dom's hands, unbound_. He could have reached up to the blindfold himself, any time. 

"No cuffs like the ones in your mind," Silas murmurs. Dom makes an inquisitive sound, mostly air, but Silas just shakes his head. 

Then he takes a closer look at Dom. "Hey," he says, half alarmed. "Dom, look at me."

Dom tries, he clearly tries, but his eyes skitter away, a flash of blue and far too much white. His breath isn't slowing, his skin still pale and clammy. "I don't—" he says. "I feel—I can't—oh God, please, _please_ —"

"Take a breath, man," Silas says, and grabs Dom by the shoulders. He miscalculates in his hurry, though, and his hands hit Dom's arms with a meaty slap.

The both freeze. _Bollocks_ , Silas thinks vehemently. He lifts his hands away from Dom's shoulders, and the skin underneath is already turning red. He knows he’s fucked it up, pushed Dom too far and in the wrong way, and now he's made it even worse. He's been lucky, he knows that, in a year of Wednesdays and another of Saturdays managed to stay just this side of the line, hurt Dom just enough and not too much, but now he's—

"Please," Dom says, so soft Silas thinks he can't have heard it right.

"I—Dom—" he says, but before he can apologize, or explain, or _something_ , Dom's eyes meet his. 

"Please," Dom says again, louder, and his eyes are like blue fire on Silas. "Silas. I need—I feel—like I'm floating, like I'm a—a gas balloon without a tether, I need to feel—my body—" He's starting to shiver now, his breath speeding up again.

And Silas is, as always, helplessly in thrall to anything Dom needs.

He lifts his hand, watching it as if it belongs to someone else, and brings it down again, right on the muscle of Dom's arm, hard. The slap echoes through the room.

And Dom sucks in a breath, and his fingers uncurl on his legs, and he meets Silas's eyes.

"Right," Silas says and it comes out in a growl. He hauls Dom up and onto the bed in one move, follows him and forces him down. Dom struggles, because of course he does, twists in Silas's arms until Silas has to use real muscle to keep him where he wants him.

Which is spread out, face down over Silas's lap. Silas catches one of Dom's wrists and presses it into the small of his back. Silas holds still a second, waits to see if Dom will continue to struggle—he could hurt himself badly if he moved too suddenly with his arm behind him like this. But now that Dom's where he wants to be, he's not struggling any more. He's got one hand gripping the bed under him for balance, and his chest is heaving, and his head is ducked, letting his dark curls hide his face from Silas.

Well, that won't do.

Silas shifts himself, so he's holding Dom's wrist in one hand and can reach up with the other to yank Dom's curls back. Dom cries out, clearly still smarting from when Silas did this before, but at least Silas can see his face now. The lost look from before is gone, his cheeks flushed instead of washed-out by that fearful pallor. 

Silas takes a breath. He has to get this right, has to walk the line of Dom's desires and his own desperate need to know that Dom is—that Silas didn't—he has to ask. "You going to stay where I put you?" he growls, keeping his eyes on Dom's face. "Going to take what I give you, and tell me how much you love it?"

Dom twists his head and Silas relaxes his hold on Dom's hair instinctively, just a touch. His heart is in his throat. But Dom only moves enough to meet Silas's eyes, his own eyes wide and dark, and says, low and intimate, "No, Silas."

That's all Silas needs, and something hot and glad wells up in his chest as he lifts his hand and brings it down onto Dom's bare arse with a loud slap. Dom arches up and cries out, and he sounds glad too. Silas hits him again, and again, until his pale skin is red and hot and Dom's cries are breaking in sobs and gasps. Each strike pushes Dom down against Silas's legs, rough homespun rubbing tender skin. Silas carefully keeps his hand away from anywhere he'd aim in a street brawl, hits where he knows it'll do no damage, layers his strikes up and down Dom's arse and legs until his own hand is stinging wildly. It's nothing like punishment and torture, nothing like what he swore at their very first meeting he would never do. It's just Dom, warm and responsive and pulling at Silas's firm grip just to know that Silas will never let him go.

Silas suddenly realizes that Dom's cries have resolved into "Fuck me—fuck me—" and abruptly Silas can't wait another minute. He pushes Dom across the bed in a wild flail of limbs, fumbles his trousers open and can't bother to even shove them down before he's on top of Dom, thrusting against skin so hot it's like to burn Silas to ash.

He holds on long enough to grab at the oil sitting on the bedside table, then spills it messily because Dom is thrusting up against him demandingly. "Hold still, you arse," Silas growls, and isn't at all surprised when Dominic does no such thing. He's spilt half the bottle on Dom, on himself, all over Dom's pale skin and bedsheets by the time he's forced Dom still underneath him. He's got one hand pressing down in the middle of Dom's back, takes himself in hand with the other, lines himself up, and shoves all the way in one rough thrust. Dom howls underneath him. God, he feels tight, his skin so hot against Silas. Silas's trousers aren't even off, they must rub painfully where Silas's hands bruised Dom's skin. Silas thrusts into him again, and again, and Dom thrashes underneath him like a tiger.

Dom is still panting "Fuck me—" like they're the only words he knows, and Silas does, fucks him brutally the way Dom likes it, the way he needs it. He pulls back just enough to land one more strike along Dom's flank, and Dom cries out and tightens around him unbearably, and Silas hears his own hoarse voice echo Dom's as he spends.

He lets himself gasp and shake for a few short moments, drops his forehead against Dom's back as he tries to catch his breath. Then he pulls out and, in a single move, heaves Dom over.

Dom is still painfully hard, his prick dark and throbbing with blood. His eyes are wild and his breath is fast, but there's none of that far-away look from earlier—he's _with_ Silas now, attuned until Silas could swear their hearts match the same rhythm.

He doesn't bother with words, just takes a bruising grip on Dom's hips, leans down, and swallows his prick to the root. Dom shouts and his hands come down instinctually to Silas's head. His hands skitter over Silas's scalp, failing to get a grip on his short hair.

Silas pulls off. "You don't touch me or I stop, understand?" he growls. 

Dominic nods, apparently unable to form words, but his hands pull away from Silas with flattering speed. Silas waits until Dom is clutching at the bedsheets, white-knuckled, then takes him down again.

He sets a brutal pace, not trying to drag it out in the least. He's none too careful with his teeth either, and every scrape wins him a burst of bitter taste on the back of his tongue. Dom is making high, small gasping noises, involuntary and nonverbal, and Silas feels his own prick twitch in a vain attempt to harden again. He takes a deep breath through his nose, digs his fingernails into Dom's thighs, and swallows every inch of Dom that he can.

Dom goes silent when he spends. His hands stay twisted in the bedsheets and don't come anywhere near Silas, and his back arches, and his cock throbs and jerks again and again in Silas's mouth. Silas swallows as fast as he can, until finally Dom collapses with a gasp. 

Silas pulls back and wipes his mouth on his arm. He'll never enjoy the taste, but he'll take it any day for the rush of Dom spending like that, for him, on his say-so. And Dom is so lovely like this, flushed and wanton, finally relaxed, entirely his.

Silas takes care of Dom the best he can, checks his skin and soaks a cloth in cool water from the ewer on the dresser to place over it.

“You didn’t hold back,” Dom says, wincing as Silas drapes the cloth as carefully as he can.

“I never do, with you,” Silas says.

He situates himself in the bed next to Dom, back to the headboard, takes a familiar book from the bedside table where it lies. The fine leather covering Dom's copy of Blake is beginning to wear, just a little, the many times their hands have turned its pages in the past year starting to show. Silas rubs at an almost-invisible spot, but the leather feels as fine and supple as ever under his hands. That's not the reason he feels so unsettled. Silas clears his throat and begins to read. 

At first he only has half his attention on the page, focusing more on the rhythm of Dom's breath as it evens out. But Blake, as he always does, surprises Silas with a shot to the heart.

"In what distant deeps or skies, burnt the fire of thine eyes?" he reads. "On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?"

He stops, the words choked in his throat.

"Keep going," Dom murmurs, turning his face just far enough for Silas to hear his words.

Silas does. "And what shoulder and what art, could twist the sinews of thy heart?"

The words blur in front of him and he can't, he can't, he can't say these beautiful words when the words inside him are going to drown him if they stay locked in his chest any longer.

"Silas?" Dom says, and opens his eyes with a frown, then rolls to his side as he sees Silas's face.

"Don't," Silas says, pushing him back down. "You'll knock the—you need—" He fusses with the cloth over Dom's arse, pulling it back over Dom, refolding to place the cool side against Dom's skin. Dom subsides under his hands, but his eyes remain on Silas, sharp and uncompromising. 

Silas sighs. "Look, Dom, I'm—I'm sorry."

"What?" Dom says, as if he doesn't understand, and Silas can't look at him. He's never thought of himself as a coward, and he's not going to start now. But he's never felt the kind of hot shame that boils within him now.

"That I—that I made you—that you said—you didn't want it, Dom. You didn't want it, and I made you, and it was bad for you, and I'm—I'm sorry."

Dom is silent, and Silas takes a deep breath, and then another, and then he's brave enough to look at Dom.

Dom is smiling at him, large and sweet. "You are an idiot," he says, tender. "Will you let me up now?"

In a haze, Silas does. Dom sits up, and swings his leg over Silas's until he's resting in Silas's lap. Silas's hands come up instinctually to hold his hips, fingers gentle on his red skin. Dom doesn't even wince.

"You gave me the word to stop it, you know," Dom says, smiling down at Silas. "I never had that, before you.” 

"But—" Silas says, and Dom leans down to kiss him, softly, just a brief press of lips to stop his words.

"It was bad for a moment there, I'll give you that," Dom says. His eyes go far away, then refocus on Silas. "I didn't like it. But I _knew_. I knew the whole time that you were there."

"You—" Silas says, and can't think of what to say next.

"For such a brilliant man, you can be surprisingly daft," Dom says without heat. "Didn't it occur to you why I said it, instead of taking off the blindfold my own damned self? There was nothing to stop me, nothing but myself. But I wanted _you_." He smiles down at Silas again, wry, and Silas has to reach up to touch the curve of his lips, wondering. "And you were there," he finishes quietly. "You were there, and you— _saw_ me, and you listened to me, and you did exactly what I needed. I don't regret a moment of it."

"Aye," Silas manages, and pulls him down into a kiss. "Well, then. I suppose I won't either."

"On what wings dare he aspire?" Dominic murmurs, and kisses him again. "What the hand dare seize the fire?"

Silas kisses him back, and hopes all the things he can't put into words are in his kiss, and knows Dominic knows them anyway, and he dares.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to olive2read and etben for thoughtful, speedy, and generally fabulous beta work, and I'm sorry for not changing that one thing you both wanted changed because it felt Necessary to My Art.


End file.
